


inevitable

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: 128 spoilers, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Zombie infection? Who knows, anyway I had a GREAT time, im playing loose and fast w canon, it’s For The Drama, me instantly: so someone’s getting infected right, ross: no wtf?????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 00:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: This was bound to happen eventually.





	inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> HEY KIDS. THIS IS WHAT WE ALL WANTED TO HAPPEN RIGHT? anyway, enjoy :)

It’s like poetry, watching him decline. First it was Hamid behind bars; then it wasn’t. First it was Hamid who couldn’t be trusted, and then it wasn’t. They’ve had too much calm. A good 60-70 seconds, you know? Enough to let their guard down. Enough for them to go wrong. Enough for Zolf to get sick.

It’s like poetry, the first time he crumples. 

Hamid bursts into tears when the spots show, right in the crook of Zolf’s shoulder and neck. Hamid cries so hard he can’t breathe, and it’s not just for Zolf. It’s not just for Zolf, it’s for _everyone,_ it’s for Sasha and Grizzop and Azu, even, but Zolf is the one who takes the brunt of his emotions. 

It’s just like old days. Just like old times. A race against the clock. A disease, impossible to cure. A faithless cleric.

It’s poetry when Zolf wakes up with blood on his lips. It’s vengeance when Zolf wakes up with blood on his lips. It’s retribution, when Zolf wakes up with blood on his lips. 

What’s almost worse than Zolf having  _ six days to live  _ is that he went to Wilde with it first. He went to  _ Wilde,  _ of all people,  _ Oscar fucking Wilde,  _ who Zolf hates, instead of Hamid. Instead of  _ Hamid,  _ his friend. Instead of Hamid, who’s been presumed dead for eighteen months and left Zolf almost as much as Zolf left him. 

Hamid bursts into tears when Zolf pulls down the collar of his shirt and sighs without making eye contact, twisting his head away so he can’t see Hamid’s reaction. Hamid starts weeping as if he’s the same boy who made a bad gamble so many months ago, starts sniffling and choking like the rain in this place can wash away any progress he’s made. 

Hamid bursts into tears, but Zolf doesn’t. Zolf just takes him close, already wincing, already avoiding any contact with the discoloured skin as he covers up his shirt and holds Hamid in a hug he’d never return way back when, and certainly never initiate. Zolf hugs Hamid and it’s so short, for protection, that Hamid almost screams with frustration. It’s infuriating. It’s  _ infuriating.  _ He’s just gotten Zolf back; he’s  _ just  _ gotten Zolf back when he lost  _ everyone,  _ and now this. Now this. Because the world hates them. Hamid is pretty sure that the world actively hates them. 

“Is, um— is Sasha going to be coming?” Zolf asks, clearing his throat, trying his best not to massage the fire in his collarbone because that, as he’s long since learned, only exacerbates the problem. Hamid, who has just stopped gulp-sobbing, goes still. See, he knows what Zolf is asking.  _ Is Sasha going to be here to watch me die?  _

“Sasha’s—” Hamid stops. Hamid stops and takes a breath. Hamid thought he could say it, but he can’t. He hasn’t. Not yet. “She’s, um—” He wants to bury his face in Zolf’s chest. He’s all cried out, but he’s far from happy. He wants to bury his face in Zolf’s chest, but Zolf is  _ infectious,  _ Zolf is  _ dying,  _ Zolf might try to  _ kill him,  _ and Hamid still wants to hug him. 

“Right,” says Zolf, glancing down and tugging at his beard. “Right, I—”

Wilde melts out of the shadows. “Is there anything you want?” he asks, surprisingly gentle, but careful not to touch Zolf all the same. Zolf looks up, world weary, and sighs.

“Just, er— just the books, thanks,” he replies, almost a mumble, and Hamid’s heart twists. Zolf’s planning to sit in a cell and die and read about far off romances  _ and die,  _ and there’s nothing anyone can do.

“Sure thing,” says Wilde, and he leads Zolf away before Hamid can say anything. Zolf glances over his shoulder and tries for a smile, and Hamid realises he was never going to speak anyway. His throat is too clogged with regret. 

It’s poetry in parallels, visiting Zolf behind bars. This time, he doesn’t try to hide the novel when Hamid walks in. This time, his eyes are too bloodshot for embarrassment. It’s poetry when Hamid reaches out and Zolf flinches back, right when they both need it most. 

“You, uh— you can’t, Hamid. Too dangerous.” 

“I— I know. Sorry.” It’s whether or not he gives a damn that’s the issue. 

It’s poetry, when Azu fiddles with the Heart around her neck and wishes for the real thing. Wonders if it could help. Wonders if this is a hell past her god. She doesn’t like Zolf, she doesn’t, but she’s still concerned about the fact that Hamid spent his night sitting outside the bars, head dropped against his chest. There were tear tracks in his make-up when she nudged him awake. 

It’s poetry, when Hamid rushes to comfort Zolf after a nightmare. It’s poetry when he isn’t let in. It’s the same as it’s ever been: there are walls between them; there are bars between them, and they’re making do with what passes through the slats. It’s poetry that the walls are physical this time. 

Wilde decides on poison, to do it. There are more than enough in this safehouse, only some of them lethal. Zolf asks to wait until the sixth day to do it. It’s poetry, how he’s clinging to life, when before Hamid was almost certain he’d been  _ trying  _ to throw it away. Zolf asks to wait until the sixth day to do it, his voice flat, and Wilde winces. Hamid can feel him trying to say no, to give him the poison now, to do what’s best, to do what’s right.

“As long as it’s in the morning,” Wilde says curtly, and leaves. His words are so sharp it’s almost possible to believe that the allowance isn’t a weakness, that he’s not overrun by emotion and fallacy, that ‘emotion’ and ‘fallacy’ aren’t synonyms by now. 

Zolf’s eyes never leave Hamid’s as he asks to push back his death sentence. There won’t be much time to look at him when he’s dead, and there hasn’t been any time to look at him in the last year and a half. The discolouration has bruised the inside of his elbow, now, and movement is beginning to hurt. Zolf doesn’t reach for the ghost of a god around his neck anymore - he’s long since broken that habit - but he does want reassurance that isn’t coming. 

And Hamid is  _ furious.  _ Hamid is so angry he could burn this place to the ground, antimagic be damned. Hamid is so incensed that he can barely see straight, because this  _ isn’t  _ going to happen again. The world  _ isn’t  _ going to do this again. The world  _ doesn’t have the right  _ to take anything else from him.

“Come here,” is what Hamid says as the cell door unlocks. No one has ever un-Turned an infected person, but Hamid has done the impossible too many times to care. ‘No one has ever done it’ is the preamble to his Wednesday afternoons. This isn’t hope, it’s inevitable. 

“Hamid, you can’t—”

_ “Come. Here.”  _

Because Hamid can see it in his eyes, that Zolf wants to live. That Zolf wants to keep the world safe, even though they both know it barely deserves their protection. Hamid can see it in his eyes, that same need to protect the people, and it’s like poetry. 

“What are you doing?” is what Zolf asks as he staggers to his feet. There’s blue in his veins, now, ocean blue mottled down his forearm, a blue wrist attached to the hand that props him heavily against the bars. It’s been two days and the infection is already wreaking havoc on his system, wreaking havoc on his mind, on his sleep.

“Leaving,” says Hamid. “And you’re coming with.”

Zolf’s face darkens. “Come on, Hamid. It’s too dangerous.”

Hamid steps closer, inside the cell, daring Zolf to come and kill him now. Daring the world to kill them all. Hamid leaves it all up to a roll of cosmic dice, and it’s poetry, how his eyes narrow into slits, how his face turns angular, draconic, purposeful. Meritocratic.  _ “I don’t care,”  _ he growls, and his word is law. 

Like a dance, Zolf steps back, takes the defensive. “You wouldn’t be able to kill me.” 

_ “I  _ would,” says Azu, from a few feet behind Hamid, glowing radiant as she tucks the poison into her breastplate. 

“You won’t be able to cure this,” Zolf warns, with dead set certainty. 

“We’ve had worse odds.” 

“You won’t get past—”

Hamid’s glowing eyes flare at the protest. “I don’t think you understand,” he says, low, measured. Diplomatic. “I’m  _ not letting you go again.”  _

“There’s not enough time,” says Zolf, as the blue creeps into his fingertips. 

“We have five days,” Hamid says, and he is beyond conviction, he is  _ angry.  _ “And we do what _ ever  _ it takes, do you understand?” 

“Hamid—”

“I’m not losing you!” Hamid cries, and he’s himself, and he barely restrains himself from throwing his arms around Zolf’s waist. He doesn’t have to, though, because Zolf takes him in a one-armed hug, as much embrace as it is apology. “I’m not— this doesn’t get to happen again—”

“I know,” Zolf breathes, full of grief and guilt and regret, looking between the corridor and the cell, one hand poised to shut the door. And does he step out or step back? Which way does he choose to go? Because there is choice, in death, in the nobility of a quest or the humility of responsibility. There is a choice, and no matter which one is made, the cell door rattles shut again. 

“I know,” he says, like an ending. 

(Did he step out or did he step back? Did he step out or did he step back? Did he step out or did he step back?) 

“Okay,” Hamid says, like a promise.

_ Did he step out or did he step back?  _

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are very much appreciated! come hmu on tumblr @thoughtsbubble, on twitter @mostlyzoe, or over hanging out on the rqdbfc :) I’m always down to talk rusty quill! thank you as always for reading :)


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